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Love/Hate: How to REALLY Tell Which Profession You Should Be Playing!

Note from Moderator: This thread is a bit out of date, but much of the information still holds true. I'm hoping someone will be nice enough to update it for us

Every profession has its ups and downs. If you choose to play ...

AN ADVENTURER:

What You're Going to Love: Shapeshifting into so many cool forms, each of which has its own cool abilities. Being able to heal yourself during combat. Attacking so fast that the other guy gets half his attacks interrupted.

What You're Going to Hate: Taking all day to whittle some targets down, because your weapons do hardly any damage. Nervously watching your health and nano energy drain down, hoping you still have some when this oaf finally falls over.

AN AGENT:

What You're Going to Love: Having almost every piece of nano software in the game available to you. But even more than that, the awesome rush of power that comes from appearing literally out of nowhere (once 14.2 gets here); firing aimed shot, fling shot, and a regular shot all in the space of one second; and watching the target, even another player, fall over dead.

What You're Going to Hate: The other 99% of the time, when the target sees you before you can fire aimed shot, or turns out to have more health or armor than you anticipated, so they survive that first volley. Then, if your "root" attack fails, you get torn apart like a stewed chicken.

A BUREAUCRAT:

What You're Going to Love: The incredible independence that comes from being able to handle any size crowd of monsters or NPCs. The even more amazing rush of power that you feel when you combine long charm and short charm, and have two of your enemies following you around doing your bidding and slaughtering their former friends. Your evil cackling laugh in team missions when you cast "area calm" and every hostile creature in the mission falls asleep.

What You're Going to Hate: Running out of suppression gas, even for a minute, and getting effortlessly wadded up like a paper napkin by player characters not much more than half your level.

A DOCTOR:

What You're Going to Love: No one in history has every been more popular. Getting rich off of Surgery buffs.

What You're Going to Hate: No one in history has ever been so helpless on their own, or more readily blamed by others when things go wrong. Being totally poor until you get to the insanely high level where you get the really good Surgery buff.

AN ENFORCER:

What You're Going to Love: Having more "hit points" than God and more armor than a planet. The squishing noise everything else in the game makes when you hit it. Seeing white all the way around an agent's or fixer's eyes when you "Rage" out of his "root," before you squash him like a bug. Being almost as popular as a Doctor.

What You're Going to Hate: Being unable to heal yourself during combat. But even more than that, when Rage fails to break the "root" and you stand there crying like a baby while some agent or fixer chops you down like a tree, from well outside of your reach.

AN ENGINEER:

What You're Going to Love: Big Robots. And forcefields that give you (and your 'bot) even more armor than the Enforcers have. And getting paid by a quarter of the planet to fix or upgrade their weapons or install the nanoclusters in their cyberware implants.

What You're Going to Hate: Running out of suppression gas, even for a minute, and getting wadded up like a paper napkin by player characters not much more than half your level - even Bureaucrats.

A FIXER:

What You're Going to Love: Submachineguns, just about the perfect compromise weapon, fast and deadly. Using run buffs and grid phreaking to get to and from missions in half the time everybody else takes. The broad grin on your face when you realize that once you've hacked a blister pack or graft of a nanoformula, you can use it even before that profession can. Blitzing missions at far above your level to get uber loot. Using a blazing lockpick to ninja loot your way through team missions.

What You're Going to Hate: Six. Dark blue. Nanoskills. All six of 'em. Read 'em and weep. Oh, and the fact that other fixers' ninja looting makes you about as popular as a leper, with halitosis, on fire.

A MARTIAL ARTIST:

What You're Going to Love: Being able to do almost anything in this game, heal yourself while doing it, and do it all so cheap that you can wipe your nether region with wadded up credits. Kicking butt, and looking stylish doing it.

What You're Going to Hate: Just like the Adventurer, eventually, it gets to the point where it seems like it takes an hour to take down a single enemy. And just as bad as the Enforcer, when you get rooted from 20 meters' range and "controlled destruction" fails to break the root, you get effortlessly killed by laughing little children.

A META-PHYSICIST:

What You're Going to Love: Pets that do every part of the mission for you except collect the loot. Making money hand over fist, as everybody on the planet begs you for nanoskill buffs, and three quarters of the people on the planet pay you to assemble their implants for them. You don't even have to advertise. You just float there in mid air ('cause you can fly!), holding your unique summoned weapons, at any busy intersection, and watch the money come rolling in.

What You're Going to Hate: "My next summon-pet nano costs how much?" Pets that get stuck in doors, in walls, in trees, in the floor, under chairs, behind tables, and don't always follow your orders when they are with you. ("I'm sorry, master, I can't do that.") Having three quarters of the planet constantly begging you for buffs or to build their implants, even when you're trying to do something else. Paying through the nose for every little thing since everybody assumes you're made out of money. And then running out of suppression gas, even for a minute, and getting wadded up like a paper napkin by player characters not much more than half your level - even Bureaucrats.

A NANO TECHNICIAN:

What You're Going to Love: Big Nukes. You take a long wind-up, right in front of most targets, while they stand there stupidly watching you, and then you blow away almost half their health in one shot. Plus lots of other cool little nano effects, like calms, and team teleports, and temporary invincibility, and ...

What You're Going to Hate: All the times after that Big Nuke when your follow-up attack fails or gets interrupted, leaving you plinking away helplessly at an angry enemy that still has half its health as it effortlessly chews you up and spits out your tiny little fragile bones.

A SOLDIER:

What You're Going to Love: Big Guns. Lots of Big Guns. And flame throwers. And grenade launchers. And machine guns. And chain guns. And auto-fire shotguns. And more armor than a mountain. And Total Mirror Shields on top of that, the next best thing to total invincibility. Being almost as popular as an Enforcer.

What You're Going to Hate: Dark blue nano skills mean that that Total Mirror Shield takes just a teensy bit longer to get than you were hoping ... like, "forever." That, and, "My next gun costs how much?" And spending more on ammunition than a Martial Artist spends on clothes.

A TRADER:

What You're Going to Love: Massive self-only Comp Lit buffs mean near-infinte NCU memory. Add to this Ransack Skills and Deprive Skills. Congratulations, your shotgun skill just went through the roof; go ahead and self-equip a QL200 shotgun at level 40. Only yours keeps working, even after version 14.2. Oh, and starting with version 14.2, as soon as you Ransack and Deprive him, the other guy's got a bad case of Combat Disfunction. For the next two minutes, nothing he does will do better than half damage. Bwa ha ha. And oh, how everybody on the planet wants to pay you hand over fist to Wrangle their skills up, just so they can equip weapons half as well as you can.

What You're Going to Hate: "Near-infinite NCU memory" costs enough to give you a nosebleed. And when that Big Shotgun gets in one lucky shot, it's going to tick off some enemy so bad that you will cry helplessly while an entire team fails to keep you alive, or even distract the now ticked-off target, as it sharpens you like a tent spike and pounds you into the ground. Aren't you just a little ... fragile ... to be firing a gun that big?

SO HOW DO YOU DECIDE?

Go over the list above. If the "What You're Going to Hate" part makes you especially queasy, cross that profession off the list. Then go back over the ones that are left, and look for the "What You're Going to Love" that sounds the most exciting. Then try playing that!

Trader & NT Calms, An Imperfect Solution (Fortunately)

Originally posted by Drunkfisht Very well written, but however you've forgotten one key skill that a trader has: Calms

So according to your list of love/hate, the trader has no flaws.

... and so does the NT. And I've tried it. And they both have the same problem, one that affects the Crat less because he's got one to three tanks to at least try to interrupt the mob's attack. They (a) take a long time to cast, when you're being beaten like a drum, and (b) they don't work every time. And both professions are pretty limited in just how many hits they can take (admittedly, the NT more than the trader). So it either works ... or it really, really doesn't.

But no, it's true ... they're a trifle complex (you almost need to have a spreadsheet open on the other monitor, sometimes), but maybe Traders have no flaws. They're certainly going to rule PvP after 14.2, you betcha. Fortunately for the rest of us, Ransack and Deprive are also pretty slow, with long wind-down times. Kill the trader before he ransacks and deprives you ... or bend over and meep like a leet. Presumably everyone will figure this out pretty quick, though, and that light blue body-dev skill will be their downfall.

Errhm

AN ADVENTURER:

What You're Going to Love: Shapeshifting into so many cool forms, each of which has its own cool abilities. Being able to heal yourself during combat. Attacking so fast that the other guy gets half his attacks interrupted.

What You're Going to Hate: Taking all day to whittle some targets down, because your weapons do hardly any damage. Nervously watching your health and nano energy drain down, hoping you still have some when this oaf finally falls over.

I feel offended here

As an Adventurer. i have to make a comment here.....

Shapeshifting, cool for showoffs, and lower level, yes, but utterly useless over lvl 50, and extremely buggy
My leet rolls constanty when ever i sidestep, and glide if i push forward-button. And to mention a Sabre/wolf hanging in the roofs in missions, and sparrows who Glide on air for several hours, with out ever Flap their wings once.

"because your weapons do hardly any damage"

Bah, it all depends what weapon and what player style you got.
Don't ever make a pistol adv, instead have a traderfriend to wrangle ur shotgun or bow skills.
Änd use ur leet form to sneak missions, u never get enuff money,(espec if ur gonna use bow, since the arrows cost more than you can earn as an Rubi-ka Prostitute).
And you can twink your char to the roof if you want, since you can choose what armor/weapon to sneak and use.

The heals are totally irregular though. i currently use a healnano that can heal from 320-690 +/-......nuff said.

Re: Love/Hate: How to REALLY Tell Which Profession You Should Be Playing!

Originally posted by Brad, STL/MO

AN AGENT:

What You're Going to Love: Having almost every piece of nano software in the game available to you. But even more than that, the awesome rush of power that comes from appearing literally out of nowhere (once 14.2 gets here); firing aimed shot, fling shot, and a regular shot all in the space of one second; and watching the target, even another player, fall over dead.

What you described only works for ithaca agents. Resorting to shotguns is not something we should have to do, and it should not be considered when writing up an agent review.

If you were to write the same thing, but with an agent using a rifle, it would look more like this:

"What You're Going To Love: Having almost every piece of nano software in the game available to you (3% of which you will accually make use of... Assuming FC doesn't nerf it, take it away, or add new nanos that you aren't allowed to use)...But even more than that, the awesome rush of power as you finally get off your Aimedshot on a red mob (after 23 tries of pounding the AS key), and it results in a whole 500 damage. Not being able use your new crit nanos with aimedshot because of the 10 second sneak rule(once 14.2 gets here); and watching the target laugh at you as you plink away at their armor with your BB gun rifle. You then fall over dead."

200 Opifex Clanner Gimp - Dinged in Style! (dimached a Virulent Minibull) Finally got my head straight, nothing like a goat helmet to get you in shape again. Oh, and those marks on my forehead (yah, still visible through the helmet, duh)... It was a Motorcycle baby. Really. Ran me over in West Athens while I was working on my tan. Think I look bad? You should see the biker.

Great guide, but something need to be added to the Engie's
"What You're Going to Hate" section:

while it may be not the most pleasant thing to take missions in NL as MP,
looking for buffs/wangle every time you lfg is by far the worst imo;
the biggest problem is that many groups are awaiting from you
bringing a red ( to you ) pet, or at least dark-dark orange.
( btw. i accept even 100% selfbuffed Engies in my groups )

One negative you don't mention about Traders, though: they are expensive. Even my MP doesn't spent money like my lowbie Trader:
Traders spend money like it's going out of style, especially until you have the BigTicket Wrangles everyone tips for. Nanos are expensive. Nanokits are expensive. Shotguns of a QL 3x your level are expensive. The eternal quest for more NCU is expensive as all heck (you can vent to MPs, they understand). Oh, and since seemingly 75% of the Trader population are twinks with unlimted resources and all the latest toys, your class generates a lot of resentment (ahem), and your failiure to peform in teams at the level of said twinks will label you "gimped" by the unwashed masses.

Very insightful. I am still relatively new to AO (trying a month after the free PC Gamer trial) and still creating character types to see which ones will stand out as my favorites. With 8 character slots per area (and another 8 if I want to try the beta, but the 16 of RK 1 and RK 2 are plenty for now).